ELIZABETH, NJ––Community Access Unlimited has been taking a novel approach to affordable housing advocacy work for several decades. CAU, which provides services for people with disabilities and other vulnerable populations, is one of the first nonprofits in the nation to pursue directly the federal low-income housing tax credit to acquire property.

“We've pioneered new ways of doing affordable housing that are both successful and integrated by people with disabilities, people without disabilities, people from different income levels, from market rental income, to people of very low income, and also from mixed use of residential and commercial space,” Sid Blanchard, CAU's executive director, tells GlobeSt.com exclusively. “It's a unique model for not-for-profits, because, particularly in New Jersey, nonprofits have been addicted to the heroin, if you will, of governmental money, with a lot of governmental regulations that come with it, that have the unintentional result, most often, of causing the nonprofit to go out of business, and the housing to have huge deferred maintenance and poor management.”

CAU, which has several hundred housing units in 75 locations in Union County, including a new property opened last year in Fanwood, has evolved from taking advantage of government funding streams in its early years to an independent developer of affordable housing, Blanchard says. He says the organization serves about 5,000 people a year, whom it refers to as “members.”